So when we play Ukraine, will the Ukraine fans boo when a black player gets the ball and cheer when John Terry gets the ball?

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@George_S96

george what happened to you in ukraine?

you seem to have some serious personal issues with the 46million people that live there.

i'm never usually critical of referees.

But serious oxlade-chamberlain 1 tackle, 1 foul, 1 yellow card. Ashley Young 1 tackle, 1 foul, 1 yellow card. Yohan Cabaye 5 fouls all of which were very deliberate trips/pulls no yellow card.

inability to spot the fouls on Gerrard & Johnson questionable as well.

There is another deliberate trip by Ribery and no yellow card.

Think we need to change something Welbeck hasn't been in the game for ages.

Decent performance. Wellbeck was isolated at times in the second half but his movement and pace gave France problems when he got involved.

I thought defensively we looked solid, particularly Lescott and Terry, however France didn't try and get in behind to often instead playing a lot of tricky passing football around the edge of the box.

Nasri and Ribery ran things when they attacked, but couldn't really find the killer ball, possibly due to a lack of movement from Benzema.

Overall a good result as long as we build on that against Sweden. Encouraging that we were solid at the back but still showed some threat going forward. I'd probably take Milner out next game for someone with a bit more pace, but other than that, more of the same will do.

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Don't be surprised. Michel Platini is French.

Riberry obviously threatened to sleep with the refs wife!

What exactly are you laughing at? At how right I am? At how little you know about football (at least that's how you come across in this thread)?

None of our centre backs are particularly fast, so to use pace as a reason for not using a certain centre back pairing is just fucking stupid.

Plus Terry IS our best centre back, regardless of pace, so it's always going to be him and one other. But your suggestion of Jagielka and Lescott being preferable over Terry and Lescott just shows how little you know. Laughable.

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"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking

Good summary, but the ref was horrendous. I counted at least 5 clear fouls on our players but nothing given, plus Cabaye was constantly cynically fouling our players yet didn't get a yellow.

Absolute joke.

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"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking

I try not to get too wound up with dodgy/one-way refereeing. We see it one way, and Davies and Townsend certainly did their best to reinforce the 'woe is me' angle for England, but I'm sure it is probably not as clear cut as we see it.

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Hmm maybe, but they did seem like clear fouls.

I agree about your point about Milner BTW: we need someone pacier who can just run at defenses.

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"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking

Don't get me wrong, Milner was probably the right choice tonight for obvious reasons, but we need to get at Sweden a bit more as they don't quite carry the same threat to our fullbacks as Ribery and Nasri.

Sent from my HTC Desire HD A9191 using Tapatalk 2

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Good summary. Both teams wanted the draw and it showed. Personally, thought it was a typical Hodgson performance but I'm not going to get excited about it cause it was an awful game and it was totally boring. We showed France too much respect because Nasri aside they ain't that good. Compared to Spain and Italy both sides are short of what it takes. I didn't see much attacking threat but I ain't seen the stats.

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This empty sanitised shell of a stadium, a cathedral to the vanity and narcissism of one man. It’s very difficult to fall in love with football amongst the rows of empty seats. The notion that a stadium has worth beyond its potential commerical value or it’s proximity to transport links – as a spiritual repository of the hopes,fears and agonies of generations of supporters, or as a physical manifestation of the football club in the community, is a dying one in football (Sam Volkman)

Hummels and Badstuber are defo top class players.

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This empty sanitised shell of a stadium, a cathedral to the vanity and narcissism of one man. It’s very difficult to fall in love with football amongst the rows of empty seats. The notion that a stadium has worth beyond its potential commerical value or it’s proximity to transport links – as a spiritual repository of the hopes,fears and agonies of generations of supporters, or as a physical manifestation of the football club in the community, is a dying one in football (Sam Volkman)

Really encouraging first half an hour from England. Looked dangerous and able to attack at pace, especially through Young, Gerrard and AOC. I agree that Wellbeck was isolated though, he looked 15 yards too far ahead of the play although showed some nice touches. Second half England seemed to want to settle for the point, especially the last 20 minutes where it was just two banks of four parked in the defensive third of the field. It strangled the game and meant France had to play in front of 8 white shirts which restricted them to long range efforts.

Disagree that France wanted the draw, they committed more attacking players forward and made positive changes but just didn't have the invention to break a well-drilled England down.

It wasn't great to watch, and the more cynical press will call this too negative/anti-football, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to bed the team into a defensive shape, especially in such a tricky first game. If they get to the knock-out stages I'd fancy England to hold a lead playing that way. The Sweden game should be interesting to see if England are now a bit more expansive, they certainly showed they're capable of carrying a threat in those opening stages and Sweden looked quite slow at the back tonight which would suit AOC/Young/Wellbeck.

Ribery was as much of threat, if not more, than Nasri. His assist was very clever, laying it back to Nasri in acres of space when most would have looked to play it forward from that position. Very poor defending from England for that one though, much too flat and much too deep.

And to be honest, I didn't think either Italy or Spain stood out as any better than what was on display tonight. Spain need to get a forward in the team to stretch defences a little more, and Italy don't really look to have much more about them than us or France.

Having watched Ukraine - Sweden, they're both very poor defensively and are there for the taking if they play like that again. As long as we continue to be disciplined at the back then we should comfortably create enough against both of them to progress.

No doubt that clown in goal for Ukraine will have a stormer against us though and we'll grind out the usual draw against the Swedes!

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A very good post. I'm afraid though that what you got tonight is what Hodgson will offer. Hodgson is a firm believer in method and at Blackburn he became fixated with it. He has an inherent distrust of flair players as far as I can tell. Defensively England played well tonight but you can't chase leather for the whole tournament. Longer term it isn't sustainable. For me to see such highly paid players play to such a basic pattern is quite worrying although I accept the players we have aren't a patch on the 1990 world cup team. The game was crying out for rooney. I take your point about France, they did attack, but they are really just a poor man's Spain. If you watch the Spain/Italy game the movement and passing was at a completely different level and for me that will be the final.

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This empty sanitised shell of a stadium, a cathedral to the vanity and narcissism of one man. It’s very difficult to fall in love with football amongst the rows of empty seats. The notion that a stadium has worth beyond its potential commerical value or it’s proximity to transport links – as a spiritual repository of the hopes,fears and agonies of generations of supporters, or as a physical manifestation of the football club in the community, is a dying one in football (Sam Volkman)

Yep, I do worry that's the case with Hodgson. It wasn't great today, but I think he should get the benefit of the doubt given it was a tricky opener with a squad that is still getting to know eachother. There was a logic to being very conservative tonight, and a point is a good result along some positives to take from our forward play in the first half.

If we're 10 men behind the ball again against Sweden then you'd have to ask questions. But if we play as we did in the first half an hour I think we might finally beat them.

Again great post. Let's see what Sweden brings. Blackburn and Liverpool make me highly suspicious of Hodgson but yeah lets give him the benefit of the doubt. Hodgson does have a lot of executive skills but he's not a natural football manager at the highest level to me. He has done well with smaller teams/nations because he is a stickler for methodical detail - moulding moderate players to his method. Where the problems are with hodgson is when he is faced with choices. He doesn't have the skills to manage bigger operations where you need more gut instinct and wider judgement.

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This empty sanitised shell of a stadium, a cathedral to the vanity and narcissism of one man. It’s very difficult to fall in love with football amongst the rows of empty seats. The notion that a stadium has worth beyond its potential commerical value or it’s proximity to transport links – as a spiritual repository of the hopes,fears and agonies of generations of supporters, or as a physical manifestation of the football club in the community, is a dying one in football (Sam Volkman)

Watched the game at work, full place went crazy when we scored. Was a half decent game, ref spoiled it a bit though. Happy with a point Come on England.

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Darlington Football Club: The Club That Couldn't Die.
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Best news of the tournament so far...The crappy annoying brass band wankers were not allowed into the game with instruments

Made my day ...annoying c**** have ruined every England match for years with endless renditions of the fucking great escape theme

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I was saying the same thing. I kind of hope the Ukrainian authorities stuck them where to sun doesnt shine. They suck the atmosphere out of every game theyre at.

I don't really follow much of Ligue 1 these days, so I'd never actually heard of him before yesterday, but Debuchy looks like a decent player. Probably could've had an assist or two as well had Benzema been playing as an out-and-out striker.

Thought Laurent Blanc's sweat patches were pretty impressive too, but Morten Olsen is definitely still the man to beat.

I thought we played well. Tight at the back as expected. We had a bit going forwards too which was nice to see. I can't wait for Rooney to be back. I think Young is a good player, but in that position he's not close to Rooney.

Having watched Sweden v Ukraine I'm reasonably confident we can get out of the group. Neither team looked great, although Ukraine got on a bit of a roll in the 2nd half, which is something we'll have to be wary of.

France looked decent, but Benzema drifted too much for my liking. A bit like Spain there seemed to be lots of pretty passing, but no real focal point of the attack. It will probably work quite well against the poorer defences, but against the better ones it might struggle to create many clear cut chances.

I hope Walcott comes in for Milner on Friday. I understand why Milner played yesterday, but I think Walcott gives us a bit more going forwards.

Overall I'm more optimistic than I was this time yesterday!

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Boycott greedy clubs!!

And then when Rooney is back, Young to the left, Oxlade-Chamberlain to the right, and Rooney behind Wellbeck.

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Think we should start Walcott for the next match. Sweeden and Ukraines defences are crap and he can use his pace to run straight past them. But then that's about all he can do

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@George_S96

I hear what some are saying about Milner but RH plays a system.

I expect Milner to start (in fact no changes at all).
The system works although France were obviously happy with a draw too.

We probably only need to win one of our next wo games to progress, job done in my eyes.
The knock out stages will find us out though.

I really think chucking Walcott and OC down the wings at the Swedes will cause them problems and stretch them. That said, if we play the way we did last night, are solid at the back, and lively when going forward, then we should create plenty against the Swedish and Ukranian defences - hopefully Wellbeck has brought his shooting boots.

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I really rate Wellbeck unfortunately in RHs system he'll have a lot of work to do and very few clear cut chances. In fact I made Wellbeck Man of the Match last night. It's all about getting out of the group stages, then with Rooney (and Wellbeck) take our chances in the knock out; with Carroll coming on when we're in trouble.

I think Walcott missed his time, Oxlade hasn't, Walcott may come off the bench but I can't see him starting

On another note Scott P is the most important player in our squad.

If he gets injured, we're in trouble. There's no one in the squad that can do his job!

Yeh, you could be right. Although I think with the number of injuries/players missing now, there's quite a few areas that could be applied to!

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